A Playdate With Death

by Ayelet Waldman

  “Candace, I’m hoping you can give me some information.”

  She looked at me suspiciously.

  “I’m doing a little checking around for Betsy, Bobby’s fiancée. We’re trying to figure out what was going on with Bobby in the last couple of months of his life.”

  At the sound of Betsy’s name, Candace’s jaw tightened.

  “I can’t help you.”

  “I think you can. I know Bobby found you through Right to Know’s web site. I know you were helping Bobby find his birth parents. Can you tell me a little more about your organization?”

  She leveled a suspicious gaze in my direction. “Like what?”

  “Well, for example, you’re an organization for adoptees looking for their birth parents, right?”

  “Not only. We have some birth parents, too. Anybody who’s looking for information. But, yeah, it’s mostly lost children.”

  The term surprised me.

  “What kind of information do you provide?”

  “RTK is really a clearinghouse, more than anything else. We pool information, get ideas on where and how to look. That kind of thing.”

  “And you started it?”

  “I got the idea after I spent two years tracking down my birth mother. I ended up finding my family through the Lost Bird Society. They help lost and stolen Indian children find their way home. I’m Lakota. Part. My birth mother is half-Indian. Her mom lived on the rez her whole life.”

  Now that I looked closely, I thought I could see a trace of American Indian; maybe it was just the dark hair, or the not-quite-prominent cheekbones.

  “Did you find your birth mother?”

  Candace shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, but she didn’t want to have anything to do with me. She’d really been coopted by the dominant culture, you know? But my grandmother, her mother, she was great. I got to know her pretty well before she died. Meeting her was like coming home. If I hadn’t been stolen from my people, I might have grown up on the reservation, instead of in Newport Beach.”

  I resisted the urge to point out that to many people, it might be preferable to grow up in an exclusive beach community rather than a pre-casino-era Indian reservation rife with unemployment and substandard schools and health care. But, then, what did I know about the spiritual vacuum experienced by American Indian children growing up away from their tribes?

  “You founded Right to Know to help others in your situation?” I asked.

  “Yeah. The thing is, nobody really cares about the kid in all this. Everybody is so worried about the rights of the birth mother and about the adoptive family. But nobody considers that the kid has a right to know who she is, even if her birth mother is trying to hide from her.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why does a child have a right to know? If the birth mother gave her up and doesn’t want to be contacted, why should the child be told who the mother is?”

  Candace glared at me, furious that I’d questioned her orthodoxy.

  “Well, the most obvious reason is medical. I mean, look at Bobby. If he hadn’t gotten tested, he might have ended up having a baby with that horrible genetic disease, what’s it called?”

  “Tay-Sachs.”

  “Yeah, Tay-Sachs. He’s lucky; he got tested. But what if he hadn’t?”

  “Well, his fiancée would have had to have been a carrier, too. But I understand what you’re saying. There are lots of genetic diseases that people should have information about.”

  “You can’t imagine what it’s like to go get a physical. The doctor starts asking you for all this information about family history, like cancer or diabetes. And you have nothing to say except ‘I don’t know.’ It’s terrible,” Candace said, banging on the table to punctuate her words. “Why should adopted kids be deprived of medical history information that could save their lives?”

  The intensity of her emotions surprised me, and I inadvertently drew back from her. She noticed my reaction and blushed.

  I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, so I said in my most reassuring voice, “That’s a good point. I’ve never really thought of that. But couldn’t we solve that problem by requiring birth parents to provide medical histories when they relinquish their babies?”

  She pushed herself back in her chair and shook her head vigorously. “You don’t get it. It’s not just the medical stuff. It’s about your identity. I’m an Indian. You know what that means? That’s the reason I never felt at home in the white man’s world.” She waved angrily around her at the benches, the carefully selected prints and posters, the little wooden tables, the white coffee drinkers. “My whole life I felt like I didn’t belong. And if my birth mother had had her way, I’d have never known why. Well, now I know. I’m a Lakota woman. And nobody can keep that from me. Not even my mother.”

  She banged her fist on the table, again, hard. Isaac looked up, frightened, and I motioned him over with my hand. He ran up to me and I scooped him into my lap.

  “Thank you so much, Candace,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of these issues before, and I appreciate your taking the time to educate me.” We both knew I was buttering her up, but I smiled my sweetest smile anyway. “Betsy, Bobby’s fiancée, is desperate to figure out what was happening with him. I understand that you found out something important for Bobby, and that he met you here at the store. I need you to tell me what it was that you told him.”

  “Why should I tell you? I don’t know you. I don’t even know Betsy.” The name sounded like curdled milk on her tongue.

  “Please, Candace. I’m not trying to get you in any trouble. I’m just trying to track Bobby’s actions for the period before his death. We need to find out why he killed himself. If he killed himself.”

  She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Do you think someone murdered him?”

  Did I? That seemed even less likely than that the cheerful, optimistic man had committed suicide. “I don’t know. That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out.”

  “What are you, some kind of a detective?”

  I paused at that. How much easier it would have been to say, “Yes, right. A detective.” Instead, I shook my head. “I’m just a friend. Candace, please. What did you find out?”

  “How do I know you’re not trying to pin all this on me?” she said, crossing her arms over her shelflike chest.

  That brought me up short. Pin what on her? Bobby’s death? I shook my head. “I’m not trying to pin anything on anybody. I’m just trying to find out if Bobby ever found his birth parents. And I know you can help me.”

  “Mama,” Isaac whimpered. The tone of our conversation was obviously frightening him. I couldn’t continue this in front of him. I wrapped him in my arms and gave him a kiss. Then I dug around in my bag for one of the business cards Peter had made up for me the previous Christmas. They were a pale moss green with my name, telephone numbers, and E-mail address engraved in a darker shade of the same color.

  “Here’s my number. Call me if you decide you’re willing to talk. In the meantime, you’ll forgive me if I turn your name over to the detectives investigating Bobby’s—” I looked down at Isaac in my lap and bit off the last word of my sentence.

  “No!” Candace said. Then, seemingly embarrassed at her own vehemence, she continued, “I’d prefer not to be involved. For the sake of Right to Know.”

  She paused for a moment and then, leaning forward, whispered, “All I can tell you is that Bobby was born at Haverford Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. That’s all I know. But it should be enough for you to find his mother.”

  Seven

  AL’S new office turned out to be a phone line, a card table, and a dented filing cabinet shoved into one corner of his garage in Westminster, a small city just south of downtown L.A.

  “Nice digs,” I said.

  I’d called him on my way home from meeting Candace to ask his advice on how to find the names of all the babies born at Haverford Memorial Hospital on February 15, 19
72. I’d also asked him what he’d heard from his friends on the force.

  “It looks like a suicide,” he had said.

  “But they’re not sure?”

  “There are some ambiguities.”

  “Like what? Explain to me what they look for when they’re evaluating a suspicious death to determine if it’s suicide or murder.”

  “A variety of things. The presence or absence of a weapon.”

  “And they found a gun in the car.”

  “In his hand, actually.”

  “Right, in his hand. What else?”

  “They look at the trajectory of the bullet. You know, could a person have shot himself at that particular angle.”

  “Did they do that in Bobby’s case?”

  “Yup, but it didn’t get them very far. The trajectory is consistent with suicide, but that obviously doesn’t rule out murder.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Sure. The presence or absence of fingerprints in the car.”

  “And?”

  “And there were fingerprints. Lots of them. Your friend had a lot of passengers.”

  I sighed. “Anything conclusive? What about residue on his fingertips? If he had fired the gun himself, wouldn’t there be gunshot residue?”

  “You’re getting good at this, girl. Sure, there would.”

  “And was there?”

  “Some.”

  “Some?”

  “Some. Not as much as you might expect, but enough to be consistent with suicide.”

  “Basically, what you’re telling me is that there’s not enough conclusive evidence either way.”

  “Right now, the forensic evidence could lead to either conclusion: suicide or death by person or persons unknown.”

  “Well, where does that leave the cops? What do they do next?”

  “That depends. There was no note, so they could treat the death as a murder, investigate the family, that kind of thing.”

  “And will they?”

  “Maybe. It depends how many other murders the detectives have on their plates.”

  I told Al about Bobby’s on-line purchases. “Why would someone contemplating suicide buy a Palm Pilot?” I asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You’re right. It does seem unlikely. But maybe it was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll call my friend and suggest that someone check into Bobby’s credit card bills in the days before his death. They’ve probably already done it, but it’s worth a word.”

  “Thanks, Al.”

  “No problem. I’ll let you know what I find out about the hospital, too.”

  Al called two days after our telephone conversation and invited me over for a “consultation.” I’d left Isaac with Peter—they had big plans to check out the new titles at Golden Apple Comics—dropped Ruby off at preschool, and headed down to Westminster.

  I sat down in a white vinyl chair Al brought out from the kitchen for me.

  “So, how’s business?” I asked.

  “Getting there. Listen, have you given any more thought to my idea?”

  “You mean about joining you in this flourishing endeavor?” I asked, waving my hand around the garage.

  “Hey, this is only temporary. Pretty soon I’ll be able to afford office space, but until then, the wife said if I’m going to be home all day, the least I can do is get out from under her feet.”

  “I don’t know, Al. It looks like a one-man operation to me.”

  “This is just the beginning. Like I told you, I’m going to start doing defense investigation, maybe some death penalty work. I could really use someone like you—someone whose legal experience would complement my investigative skills. It would be worth your while, Juliet. At a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, the money’s going to be rolling in.”

  I nodded, not wanting to rib him anymore when he clearly had such faith in me. “Why would my legal experience be useful to you? I don’t know much of anything about investigation. That’s why I’m always bugging you for information.”

  He leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the card table. He was wearing pale blue Sansabelt slacks with a slight flare, a gold shirt, and navy socks with white clocks. His shoes seemed to have been made out of the same material as my chair. I wondered if they came as a set.

  “Because you’re a defense attorney. You know how to put together a case. You know what kinds of things to investigate, what’s relevant, what’s not.”

  “But the lawyers you’re working with will tell you what they want investigated. They’ll put together their own cases.”

  “True. But having that added expertise would give us an edge on the competition. And how many times have I heard you say that two-thirds of the criminal defense lawyers out there don’t know their asses from their elbows? Just because they’re paying us doesn’t mean they have any idea what we should be doing.”

  That made sense to me. “But I’m not licensed.”

  “You don’t have to be. That’s the beauty of it. I’m a licensed private investigator. You work for me. We call you a defense specialist, or a mitigation specialist if we’re doing a death case, and then you don’t need to take the investigator’s test or do the obligatory hours. Or, if you want to, you can apply for your license, take the test, and then do your hours with me.”

  The idea did have a certain appeal. Since I’d quit work, I’d found myself increasingly bored and frustrated with staying home. I’d left my job because I thought raising my kids myself was more important than working, but sometimes it was difficult to imagine that my sighing, listless presence around the house was really doing Ruby and Isaac any good. The only time I’d been really happy over the last couple of years was when I’d been doing what amounted to investigative work. Only then did I feel like I was taking advantage of my skills and my intelligence. At the same time, however, I wasn’t ready to give up and go back to work even if pushing a stroller might not have been doing it for me.

  “The whole point of quitting the defender’s office was that I wanted to be home with my kids. If I wanted to go back to work, I’d go back to being a lawyer.”

  “Aren’t your kids in school by now?” Al asked.

  “Ruby’s in preschool. But Isaac’s just a baby. Almost. He’s two and a half.”

  “He’ll be in school soon, too. What are you going to do with yourself while the kids aren’t home? Are you planning on going back to the defender’s office then?

  He’d hit the nail on the head. What was I going to do when Isaac started school next year? Going back to a public defender’s rigorous schedule didn’t appeal to me. Someone had to pick the kids up every day after school, and Peter’s schedule was just too unpredictable. If I went back to my job, I wasn’t going to be able to be there when the kids came home. I’d show up in time for dinner, like I’d done when Ruby was a baby. I hadn’t wanted to do that then, and it wasn’t looking any better to me now. On the other hand, I wasn’t one of those people who could while away the school day at aerobics classes or volunteering at the local hospital. I was going to have to find something else to keep my mornings busy.

  The idea was sounding better all the time. But was I really ready? I didn’t think so. “I don’t know, Al. I’ll think about it. Anyway, are you going to charge me a hundred and fifty bucks an hour to tell me how to find the mothers who gave birth at Haverford Memorial on February 15, 1972?”

  Al smiled. “Nope. You’re still on the discount plan.”

  “Thanks. So, how do I go about tracking down the mothers?”

  “You read this list.” He swung his feet off the table and pushed a sheet of paper across to me. On it were the names of seven women.

  “What’s this?”

  “The mothers who gave birth at Haverford Memorial Hospital on February 15, 1972.”

  “No way! How’d you get this?”

  He smiled mysteriously. “Secret of the trade, I fear. Available only to other investigators.” />
  “C’mon, Al!”

  “Come work for me and find out.”

  I kicked his ankle, hard.

  “Okay, here’s what I did. It wasn’t that difficult. The hospital keeps records of births, obviously. Nowadays, those records are all computerized, and if you’re allowed access, or if you can somehow get into the system, the records are there at a touch of a button. However, because of patient confidentiality, it’s a challenge, to say the least, to get into the system. We were lucky, though, and Haverford Memorial never bothered to computerize its old records. I figured right off the records probably wouldn’t be stored at the hospital—they take up too much space. I called a few of the larger document storage facilities and found the one the hospital uses to store its old records. It wasn’t too far from here, so I just took a little drive on over.”

  “And they let you in to look at the documents?”

  “Well, let’s just say that a well-placed gratuity did the trick. You owe me a hundred bucks.”

  I got out my checkbook and wrote him a check, which he pocketed with a gracious “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Lucky for us the records were very well-organized. I found the births recorded by day and date.”

  Together we went over the list. Four of the women who had given birth to babies on Bobby’s birthday had had girls. The mother of one of the three boys was named Michiko Tanazaki. I figured I could safely rule her out. That left two women, a Brenda Fessler who in 1972 was nineteen years old and a Susan Masters, who was twenty-six.

  Al promised to run a skip trace on the two and happily accepted the check I wrote him to cover the costs of the search. Then the two of us went inside to say hello to his wife.

  Jeanelle Hockey was a lovely, dark-skinned woman with perfectly ironed hair who favored twin sets and knee-length skirts. In many ways, she seemed an unlikely mate for Al, who, with his golf clothes and military haircut, was the last man you’d imagine in an interracial marriage. The two had met in the late 1960s, when he was a uniformed police officer, and she a civilian employee of the Los Angeles Police Department. They’d been married almost thirty years and had three daughters in their twenties.